Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust is piloting a new AI-supported staff scheduling system aimed at reducing administrative workload and improving workforce resilience.
The initiative, part of a collaboration with the Hartree Centre and the Science and Technology Facilities Council, focuses on modernising how on-call and clinical rotas are created at one of Europe’s busiest children’s hospitals.
Currently, senior clinicians often rely on complex spreadsheets to balance annual leave, sickness, working patterns and regulatory requirements, a process that can take several days each month and divert time away from patient care.
Under a new strategic agreement, the Hartree Centre and Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust have developed an AI-driven system that automatically generates balanced and compliant schedules. The tool incorporates real-world constraints such as staff skills, availability and contractual rules, producing draft rotas that clinicians can review and adjust.
Project leaders say the approach is designed to retain human oversight while removing much of the manual effort involved in planning. A user-friendly interface allows managers and clinicians to make rapid changes, helping teams respond more quickly to unexpected absences or changes in demand.
The first phase of the programme focuses on on-call planning, but partners say it is intended as a foundation for wider workforce management in future. If successful, the system could be expanded to cover full rota management and potentially be adopted by other NHS organisations facing similar pressures.
Professor Iain Hennessey, director and founder of innovation at Alder Hey, said improving rota processes could have a direct impact on frontline care. “Sometimes the most impactful innovations are often the simplest,” he said. “Improving how we build our rotas is a perfect example of technology giving clinicians more time to care.”
The partnership builds on more than a decade of joint work between the two organisations, including projects on data analytics and digital tools to support patient experience. The Hartree Centre, based at Daresbury Laboratory, specialises in high performance computing, AI and applied data science for public and private sector organisations.